


Appetites

by another_Hero



Category: Leverage
Genre: F/M, Food, vibe without plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:27:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23496757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/another_Hero/pseuds/another_Hero
Summary: She didn’t answer too fast; didn’t want to sound rehearsed. She didn’t say it seductively. In the same voice she’d used to talk about the wine, she said, “I want to eat you.”
Relationships: Sophie Devereaux/Nathan Ford
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	Appetites

“I don’t know what you want from me.” He wasn’t frustrated. He couldn’t hide that kind of thing from her. He wasn’t in arm’s reach; he was cooking, and she was sitting on the bit of counter nearest the stairs with her feet dangling, facing back at him, watching him cook.

She didn’t answer too fast; didn’t want to sound rehearsed. She didn’t say it seductively. In the same voice she’d used to talk about the wine, she said, “I want to eat you.”

Still, she smirked when the comment landed. Nate’s mouth opened once and closed again. His face flushed, just barely. “N—now?” he asked, and trying to make it suave, “because half-cooked risotto doesn’t exactly keep.” He’d have abandoned it if that was what she wanted, she knew. In these brief times when their heads weren’t filled with a job, he never, ever denied her appetites.

“Most of the time,” she answered frankly. She’d been looking forward to the risotto.

He shook his head just a bit. She could hear the silent _unbelievable_. She let herself smirk. She let him see it.

Sophie wasn’t much of a cook, outside a small set of practiced dishes—in case of emergency, sear ahi, that sort of thing. But she knew things it was useful to know. For instance, that risotto needed to be stirred frequently. She sat there and watched him keep cooking, and he stood there and watched her right back, as best he could without letting the pan fall off the stove. Nate didn’t know what _he_ wanted either. She was the one responsible for defining their desire. She sipped her wine without breaking eye contact, and she took her necklace off and slipped it into her purse beside her, and she looked, and she let the clarity emerge in the air between them. Nate’s attention was pulled away first: he had to put the cheese in, plate everything, his movements fluid and practiced and just a little tense. He looked capable; he didn’t look at home. He sipped wine—she hadn’t poured that for him, she’d let him choose, she wasn’t going to make a failed hobby of reforming the man—and his adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. Even when Sophie hopped down and sauntered over to the dinner table, she turned her head back and watched him watch her go; she sat facing the kitchen, and she let her meal be brought to her.

As always, she was vocal in her appreciation of the dinner. Nate thrived on appreciation, which she had never pointed out to him because she had better sense than to say, _Have you considered that you’re very like your father_. Anyway, he wouldn’t have made it for her unless he knew it would be delicious. This thing between them, it wasn’t where he liked to take risks. She made an effort never to read too far into that. He was an insurance man at heart, she told herself. Her effort was sometimes successful.

He reached for her plate when it was empty; they both knew she wasn’t going to wash plates. “Nononononono,” she said, sliding them away from his hand, sliding herself into his lap.

“I mean,” he said, “the dishes—”

“Buy new dishes.” She tugged on his earlobe with her teeth.

“You’re like climate change incarnate, you know that?”

“Mm.” She swiped her tongue up behind his ear. “You’ll steal me a new planet.”

“Maybe a bunker,” he breathed.

“Oh, très chic,” she murmured into his mouth. She brought his hand behind her back to the top of her zipper.

“Here?”

“It has its advantages.” She moved back and up onto the table, let the dress pool at her waist, unhooked her own bra with her right hand while her left stayed in Nate’s hair. She didn’t move him into place; he didn’t require that kind of direction. Fingers in the curls told him all he needed to know.

After, she let him clean the table while she peed like a responsible adult and brought him a glass of water and made him drink it, and she rifled through his closet for the shirt she’d selected for herself when she’d felt the silk. It was clean; she never asked, but every week or so, he sent it out. She crossed her legs on top of the duvet to find out what mood they were in now.

Nate reached for her, and then she was spooning him, one protective hand over his belly. He ran a hand of his up from there to her elbow. She scratched into the hair around his navel and stayed put for a second and let her lips land on the back of his neck. Then she pulled away to go to sleep. There was no sense in being too tender with Nate. You couldn’t guess what he might do.

He was gone by the time she woke up; that was par for the course. When he came back up the stairs with tea in one hand and her garment bag in the other, she let a knee fall off the bed and waited for him to hang the bag on the banister and set the mug on the nightstand; then she caught his wrist and tugged so he sat against her thigh. “Busy morning?”

“They won’t be here for a few hours,” Nate said. “Don’t hurry.”

She smiled and pulled his head down against her ribs. They didn’t do this during work time, quiet. She wasn’t sure they were supposed to do it at all. Some people surely made lives out of this feeling of being an island together, but she and Nate weren’t building a life, they were building a portfolio of professional successes. Nate was already dressed; no one would notice he was a little more rumpled than usual this afternoon. He stayed there, was the thing. Pliant in her lap, a hand on her hip, all the way until her tea mug was cool enough to hold and she slid up the bed to sitting. Slowness wasn’t what they asked of each other. It was the kind of intimacy William had offered her, endlessly and unprompted, and she’d found it oppressive then. Now she sipped her tea—sugar, lemon—in the scant time alone they could manage. Nate hadn’t sat up with her, and now his lips were on her knee, and now his lips were on her thigh. “If I spill this on your head,” she threatened.

“You won’t.” He lapped at a vein, and she shivered, but she didn’t spill her tea.

“I might do it on purpose,” she shrugged. She had excellent control of her voice; she kept it light.

“You like these sheets too much to stain them.”

“I could steal you new ones.”

“In Milan?”

“Shush,” she said, “talking is distracting you.” He bit her thigh; it tensed, and he chuckled into it, and she set the tea back on the nightstand. Milan was too crowded at this time of year anyway. They had work to do in Boston.

**Author's Note:**

> hey leverage fans just popping in to read as much sophie/tara as possible and write this lil thing mostly to figure out how it is possible that I like Sophie/Nate at all despite, like, the mind games


End file.
